Weisner's "The Three Pigs"

As a whole, the class found the story we covered in class on Friday, Weisner's "The Three Pigs," amusing. And why shouldn't we? This was Weisner's intent. Following the example of adult cartoons such as The Simpsons and South Park, Weisner took a genre traditionally intended for children and addressed adults instead. We feel the discord between genre and content unconsciously because the specified audience of the genre is so ingrained in us. This uneasiness is then perceived as humor. At some point, we overcome the genre written in our culture and can appreciate the work for the questions it raises, not just its amusing qualities.

At that moment -- that precise moment when we give the book more attention than merely an amusing children's book -- we are treating it differently. Mimicking the plot of the book, the book itself has escaped its genre into a new genre. Who initiated this change? Who created this new genre -- Weisner or the reader(s)? It seems a pointless thing to argue, like the Chicken or the Egg paradox, but it is a paradox central to this course and thus, of importance to the field of rhetoric.

Who gave the text meaning, the writer as the Creator, or the readers who are the "space on which all quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost?" (Barthes) Can this even be attributed to one or the other or is it due to a compilation of efforts resulting in a partnership?

And this is how the text ties into the themes of this course. We didn't have time to get there on Friday, but this is the paradox of agent/cy. Is Weisner the agent of this new genre or is he just the primary agency through which it was created in conjunction with the rhetorical situation and his audience? Are the readers -- or society as a whole -- the agents through which this text was created? After all, separated from his society, Weisner could never have published this. Perhaps society created this text for society, through Weisner.

There seems to be paradoxical questions at a plot level as well. Who is affecting change in the plot, the Author (narrator) or the characters? Who is writing the story of the three little pigs? At first it seems the narrator is, but the pigs quickly deviate from that path and write their own story. Characters are traditionally agencies through which a story is told -- but in this case, on a plot level, they are the agents of their own story.

Weisner almost seems to be saying the exact thing as Barthes, that the author has experienced a death of sorts. In his story, the Author is practically powerless and definitely clueless as to what is actually going on in the illustrations. The Author is a passive role while the characters themselves are given the power, contrary to the traditional view of an author who is seen as pulling the strings behind the curtain. Has Weisner unmasked this becurtained fellow, the author, supporting Barthes' claim? Or does he refute it by remaining curtained himself, just making the charade of the story a more complex disguise?

Ultimately, we may never know Weisner's true intents in writing this book but it does pose interesting questions for the field of rhetoric.

Catalina Moore